Charles W Fay
I believe that Physics is one of the most important areas of study to which students in a university can be exposed. Few disciplines touch on so many aspects of life.
I encourage student feedback both in class and out, for me office hours form an important time when I can engage students directly. This allows me to answer specific questions for students and to work directly on the issues that they are struggling with.
Education
Ph.D. Physics (2007), Michigan State University
Field: Theoretical Computational Condensed Matter Physics
Thesis Statistical Mechanics of Vertex Cover
M.S. Physics, University of Missouri - Kansas City
B.S. Engineering Physics, University of Illinois - Urbana Champaign
Teaching
General Physics 201, 202
Modern Physics
Thermodynamics
Research
Research interests:
- Computational condensed matter - Lattice gases
- Computational Biophysics/Mathematics - modeling epidemic spread on graph like populations
- Applied Mathematics - Percolation, non-deterministic polynomial complete hard problems (NPC)
I have done work in the area of computational condensed matter, particularly in the analysis of hard computational problems such as maximum independent set and vertex cover, other problems of this type are the traveling salesman problems and protein folding.
Recently, I have applied these techniques to analyzing the spread of disease when a population is mapped as a network.
Professional Experience
2007-2013 Ferris State University, Big Rapids, MI
2013-2017 King University, Bristol, TN
2017- present Emory & Henry College, Emory, VA
